A day in the life of us....

We wake up in the morning about an hour before dawn, Zarra having a feed and a nappy change, in the process waking the twins who climb into bed next to dad.  As dawn’s tendrils feel into the window in our bedroom, the other kids get in as well, so there’s nine in the bed, and Balthazar says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Griffyn and Lilly fall out……to go and collect up cups and bottles, and put on the hot water to boil, and start the process of our greatest family ritual, the cup of tea, ecco, or hot chocolate in the morning.  Then there’s seven in the bed and little Max says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Spiral fall’s out……..to hop back in her bed in the loungeroom where the three big kids have been sleeping so they can tell each other stories as they go to sleep at night and hang out together.  Despite many people disbelieving us, we all really like each other, and feel most supported and ourselves when we’re all together, either hanging out at home or going on an adventure.   Then there’s six in the bed and no-one says ‘roll over……roll over’, cause it’s cold outside and Max and Zarra are asleep.  A bit later there’s six in the bed, and mummy says ‘roll over…..roll over’, so we all roll over and Balthazar falls out to go and see what all the others are up to.  Then there’s five in the bed and Merlin says ‘roll over……roll over’, but nobody does so he gets out.  And we hear later on that he’s got a full nappy so Currawong gets out to change his nappy and pour the hot water.   (With a slight detour to make sure that Merlin’s not beating the crap out of my laptop)  So there’s three in the bed and Max wakes up and rolls over……rolls over, and gets out of bed to see where everyone is.  And a bit later I hear that Max has a nappy that needs dealing with too, so I roll over…..roll over, and get out of bed to leave Zarra asleep on his own for a bit. 

Babie’s are changed and climbing into the big bed in the loungeroom with the other kids to consume their ‘hot juices’, ( another bizarre family ritual, dating back to when Griffyn was about three and a total apple juice nut, so everything to drink was ‘juice’, and cups of tea were ‘hot juices’ ) Currawong and I take turns in the shower (swapping saucy comments as we pass) to warm up and start the day fresh, while the kids are watching Saddle Club from the library.  I jump out, dress warm, and mix up corn and rice puffs with honey and milk to feed the boys as Zarra is still asleep.  All the other kids are in various states of consuming breakfast and a big discussion is going on about how they hate the snobby girl in Saddle Club.  I tell em I reckon she’s the best character cause she’s got spunk and imagination, and the other girls are all a bit too nice for my liking, and this starts up a conversation about how there’s always goodies and baddies in movies, and the baddies never win, and then I ask them if that’s the way it happens in real life.  And it’s not hard to think that the baddies win far more often than happens in movies, cause they’re running our corporations and governments and militaries and all the other institutions that are messing with our planet and it’s future.  Zarra wakes up.

Then us big people say ‘let’s do a big clean up, and we can get it all done and then just hang out for the rest of the day’, and between us all we whip around and get everything ship shape.  I get a bit big animal growly with the kids when one of them is wandering in a circuitous fashion to the bathroom carrying one sock for the washing, but we get beyond all that and get the space sparkly.   Lilly does benches, lots of compost and some general tidying, Griffyn does the floors and a whip around which he’s a bit of a legend at, Currawong does the recycling in the bathroom, and I sweep the floors.  While Spiral’s holding Zarra, Balthazar is wandering round having sporadic bursts of a tantrum about something or another (he’s three…..no more needs be said), and the twins are doing their best to merrily get in the way.  Max’s favourite trick is standing in the sweeping up pile, treading it under his feet, and spreading it in pretty patterns.  We get a surprisingly large amount done really quickly when we do it all together.

For a while there’s general grazing going on, a few rice cakes here, a few apples there, as the big kids go off for a walk down to the Coffee Club, and the twins mill around doing cute twin things.  Like sitting on the verandah hanging on the rail and looking out at the sky and the birds and hoping to spot a Bush Turkey.  And watching the neighbours cows who often free range on our grass. I take a moment to hang out with Zarra, stare in each others eyes and smile lots.  The big kids go off on walks often, and adventure round Billen or just make their own fun.  Just lately they’ve been getting into slapping foam pool noodles on the ground in a way that makes a huge ricochet like a gun shot, they like listening to the echo, and for a few days they filmed each other pretending to have huge punch ups, and someone out of the shot slapping the noodle in time with the punches.  Maybe a touch violent, but a fair call too in a culture where the media is often about aggression, fighting, and the eternal good versus bad. 

When they’re back from the walk, we all move around between housey pursuits.  Merlin falls asleep on the lounge.  I spend some time sitting on the computer replying to messages on facebook whilst feeding Zarra, and then hand it on to Griff searching on the internet for nerf guns ( another huge conversation that we all have about why he likes them, what they mean to him, why we don’t like them, what they mean to us, how we respect his right to like what he likes, how he can respect our opinions by using guns responsibly around us, what the rules are for gun possession – even toys need to be treated as the real thing if you want to develop a healthy relationship with them).  Lilly sits on the bed on the verandah drawing pictures, and Currawong reads Paul Jennings stories on the couch, while Balthazar, Max and Merlin take turns bike riding the circuit round the verandah and house.  Lilly helps me write this, giving me tips on the ‘roll over’ bit, and reminding me of stuff.  Meanwhile Max goes to sleep now that Merlin’s awake, as they often co-ordinate sleeping at different times these days.  Currawong gets a phone call from a phone company and ends up talking about how he drums and I crochet and write, and about homeschooling……as you do…….and a myriad other little things and dynamics go on all the while.

A lot of people ask me about what we do with our kids, if we do any formal schooling, are they socialised?, how are they learning?............... 

And it’s hard to say exactly what we do.  It varies.  And changes.  And most of our collective learning is what’s going on as we tumble through our days.  The conversations we have about things that are going on and different ways of looking at them.  The discussions inspired by the science that Currawong is consuming with an insatiable hunger about our universe, and our earth, and it’s animals, and geology, and all the rest of it.  The answers to questions that we all come up with together, consulting each other about how else it could be approached.  Like what colour dinosaurs are, and what the biggest horses, dogs, and cats are, and micro chips, and google glasses, and plasma.   And it’s amazing how much maths, science, geography, English, art, philosophy, history, and music can be learnt about through interesting conversations that the kids actually remember.  The explaining and demonstrating needed to translate between the little kids and the big kids and what they are teaching each other by example.  The talks me and Currawong have about what we’ve taught them with our functional and dysfunctional family patterns, and how to change them all if we need.  The depth to which we know our children, and their special needs and strengths and areas in which we realise we have to really caretake them.  The way how all of us reference and cross reference our experiences and favourite learnings to each other.  Adding layers to our combined stories that bring a new lesson with it.  The differing measures of love and respect, and disregard and grumpiness that we all treat each other with, and the working out between us all how to always do it better. 

And our adventures into the outside world!  We go and hang out at the Bush Theatre in Nimbin sometimes on a Wednesday for basketweaving, and there are other homeschooled kids and parents, and lots of other women making fantastic fibre artworks, and gorgeous crones and artisans teaching and showing how to weave magical baskets.  They’re all colourfully and uniquely dressed, and bring rare and beautiful instruments, and now and again at an unappointed time, everyone will draw close and break out the music, as Currawong sits on his drums and gently keeps his drum song steady within it.   If we’re ever craving company or conversation from others, we just drive into Nimbin and park our home away from home – our van – on the main street.  And that’s all we have to do really.  By the time the kids have erupted from the van and instantaneously decided they need a lolly or a walk or have seen a friend or want to pat a dog, I sit next to Zarra where I stay for the first 6 months or so of my baby’s journey in vehicles, and someone is bound to come up and chat to me as I pull him out of his baby seat and give him a feed in my comfy velvet bound spot.  I don’t even have to leave the van to have deep and meaningfuls, and Currawong often just pulls his drums out and drops some rhythms in the park, while we catch up or have chats or co-ordinate who’s going where.  There’s all these gorgeous teenager girls in town who love our kids, and anytime we rock up will pick up a baby and take them off for a walk, or let a whole mob of them straggle along behind them as they do their thing on the street.  We seem to have some seriously magical parking karma in Nimbin.  We always manage to be able to pull up just where the action is.  Like Michael Lusty’s wake, when we were parked virtually on top of the drumming circle, all our friends and loved ones standing round our van and hanging out with our little people while Currawong drummed and I danced. 

I read a quote on facebook the other day, that was written in chalk on a blackboard that said “Forced Association is NOT Socialisation”  And it made me think.  Throughout the course of our days, we come across anyone from brand new babies to grandparents and crones, and our kids can slide along the age scale as easy as swinging on a see saw with anyone our paths cross.  Nobody scares them, and they’re always willing to talk to anyone, respectfully and honestly, like us, their role models, try to be with everyone we meet.   I know where they are and am personally connected with the people they hang out with.  We all learn together and approach everything in life with curiosity and imagination.

And when it all comes down to it, and after much reflection about our children, society, and our choice to keep them at home, what’s most important to me is that we protect our kids as much as we possibly can from any external force that wishes to control, shape, or teach them how to ‘be’ in any other way than they naturally are.  It’s taken me till the ripe old age of 41 to know who I am, what I’m here for, and to have the confidence to be it in the world.  I want my kids to be at this point a helluva lot earlier than me!!  All I want really is that they simply have the confidence to be themselves.   

Anyway, I got a bit off course.  Back to our day.

Over the course of our day we’ve had three visitors, folks from the community that just randomly pop in.  One of the funkiest grandma’s there ever was, and the fella who lives in her caravan in return for helping round her property.  He gets by doing gardening for a cheap rate, and joins with many of the other folk round here carving unique lifestyles and paths towards income.   People drop in all the time at our joint, for a quick and inspirational chat, or to give us clothes, shoes, veggies, or other random generous gifts.  And we’re always open for people in need.  Who need somewhere to stay, or some food, or some company……after Michael Lusty’s death, the pact we made to not let anyone slip through our net who is in need, has been regularly taken up.  Our kids love visitors.

About this time is when we start getting ready for dinner, another quick clean up happens (you’ve got no idea how much dross can be scattered on the floor by twin toddlers and a three year old, especially when one of their favourite games that’s almost impossible to stop them from doing, is playing with the cold ash from the fire and making roads and railways in it….) 

And tonight is the first night that it’s cold enough to have a fire, so the lounges get moved close, and the little kids watch enraptured, as we’ve not had an open fire in our living space before, and when it’s lit, the kids all go a little hazy and dreamy as they gaze into the fire.  But Max and Merlin being Max and Merlin, it’s not long before they realise that putting the lounges close to the fire means they can jump up on the bench, so of course they do, and give dad a bit of help cooking dinner. 

Then after dinner it’s the time when we’ll sit around and watch something – a documentary, or a kids movie, or a series that we’ve gotten into (Darling Buds of May was a big hit, and so was My Favourite Martian and Get Smart).  Then it’s time for some books before bed, and nappies are changed again, pyjama’s put on, beds made, hot juices for the night furnished, and all the little sleepy babies go to sleep nicely around 8…..we’ve trained them well……and Currawong and I get to spend a little time conversing without interruptions, gazing in the fire, and remembering all the love we have between each other that’s created such a wonderful full life.

The baby that came bearing gifts - Part 1

It would be easy to assume on the birth of my eighth child that I am a veteran of birth, a knowledgable birthing woman in tune with her body and the rhythms of birthing, and secure in my role as a mother and lover and creatrix of little people.  But to be truthful, the more I birth, the more I realise I know nothing about birth, or more to the point – I could birth another eight times and still feel like I was standing before a limitless vista of birthing potentials and possibilities.  And lessons to learn and fears to face.  Attachments to let go of, and sacred cows to murder……  I had so much more to say about what was ‘right and true’ when I was just beginning my birthing career.  And now I find that everything just is.  Take out the judgement and it’s all just lessons.  The more I birth, the more I realise there is to know about birth……

So to set the scene for this recent birth, we’d all just got to a really nice place with each other, after a long long time of being observed and judged and in other people’s spaces, and sorting through recent trauma’s, and were all cohesively living and loving together and playing and having fun. The description of this time was in my last posting about Love….. Lasted about a week.

Only thing we needed to settle us, and before we got serious about baby preparation, was beds, cause the rest had been catered for.  So one day we get beds, the next day we drive to get our big girl from the airport, and the next day a friend turned up with her two young girls.  That same night a fellow community member dropped in too, and it was all of a sudden too many other people in our sanctum.  We slipped into our bedroom that night and felt overwhelmed and like we’d made a big mistake.  We’d finally got to a good and private place and then invited the world into it, and gave it away, what the hell was with that? When were we gonna be free to be ourselves in our own home again?  Went to sleep feeling slightly silly, distraught and ominous, after lots of activity and socialising….

And then woke up at 3am that morning, went for a wee, and had amniotic fluids running down my legs.  Shock, denial, fear, disbelief, horror, and panic played poker for centre stage, and I woke Currawong up to tell him, so they could tap dance in his head as well.  We decided to hope for the best, believe that my bladder had finally and all of a sudden sprung a leak after all these birthing years, and go back to sleep.  I woke up at 7 in the morning, had another wee, and this time the plug came away, with a whole heap of fluid, and I knew that I had to face up to it.  I was 35 weeks pregnant, which many people would agree is far too early to be considering birthing at home, and going into premature labour which is associated with lungs not yet ready, and a hospital birth with lots of backup, care, and postnatal attention.  After talking to my birth support person, Annetta, we decided that it was safest to just ring the local hospital and go in for their help, so sadly and miserably I packed my bags and asked my big daughter and our friend who’d just turned up the night before, to look after all our babies, while we went to the hospital for who knows how long.

We got there, and I mistakenly expected all the flurries and attention of the hospital folk that you’d see in a tele drama, and instead we got mostly left in a room for hours on our own. One of my first thoughts was about a midwife friend…….who had greeted this pregnancy with a seeming prophecy (that really messed with my head throughout the whole pregnancy), about how if this baby was to be stillborn, or with special needs, or needing intensive medical assistance, then that would be fine……and I told Currawong that she’d been right.  Here we were in hospital.  Feeling really depressed.  A hardened midwife of many many years was our tour guide into the system, and at first she was horrified that I was so far into a pregnancy at my age and with my history, without having had any tests, or ultrasounds, or doctors appointments…..  She wanted to kick us out and stop us wasting her time, so we could go and do paperwork and blood tests with a doctor instead of her.  It’s a tricky thing to try and explain to a hospital based midwife that I trusted my body and the process of birth, and hadn’t seen the need for medicalising my experience or getting information that might haunt me, especially considering that we wouldn’t have aborted this child in any case.   She put one of those machines on me that needed strapping in two places to my belly, and that recorded my blood pressure, baby’s heart beat, and contractions.  Currawong and I chatted and told stories, and asked her questions about herself, till she started to thaw, and realised that we weren’t homebirth extremists, and started making comments about ‘some alternative people who aren’t as open minded as you two….’ and the like. A sad chapter in the war between homebirths and hospital births is, this woman was bitter from the attacks she’d felt from ‘alternative’ types while she was doing her job to the best of her ability over the years……and if we had reacted to her reacting to us, we could have had a very different experience. 

A young doctor came in and asked a whole heap of random questions in the hope we wouldn’t notice he was checking us out, and that was the last we saw of him.  Then there was just hours of us sitting in an unused and sterile birthing suite, chatting, making phone calls to the kids and friends, Currawong popping out for fruit cake and bottled water whilst pouring money into parking meters, looking around at the standard fare in surroundings for women and families who birth in hospitals, and having moments of tears and disappointment, as we thought we were watching our homebirth sail off into the distance.  About 5 hours later and after not seeing a doctor or having an ultrasound or having anything really checked out, our new friend the midwife came in with a pill to stop labour, tags with my name on it for my wrist, and a shot of steroids in my bum for developing the baby’s lungs, as it was premature.  6 hours later another midwife came on duty who we connected with straight away, as we all told each other how judgement was futile, and it was far easier to make peace with your own decisions, and accept other people and the choices they made, rather than fight about it.  I had another 2 pills over the next hour, and time for a huge hug and cry with Currawong, as we realised that this was really it, and I’d be staying overnight in the hospital on my own, and he would go off to spend the night with the kids.  We really don’t dig spending time apart……

7 hours after getting to the hospital, a wild eyed doctor came in, asked about the dates, and within minutes had ascertained that I’d got my dates wrong, because I’d counted from  conception, rather than the two weeks before it, when the egg had descended and become ‘alive’.  Or in plainer language, I’d counted from conception, instead of from the first day of my last period, which is when the rest of the world considers the beginning of pregnancy to be.  I wasn’t 35 weeks pregnant, I was 37!!  We looked at each other horrified, and thoughts jockeyed in my head about how I’d robbed us of a homebirth, how stupid I felt, how I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life, and all sorts of other barbs.  But in my defence, we’d counted it from conception because we both remembered so clearly how this baby was made!  And the date of it.  It was a memorable event.  Other people remember holidays or outings, but my love and I remember conceptionsJ  So as we sat there looking shocked, the doctor tried to joke us out of it, asked us about our birthing history, and got very serious when I told him that our last birth was twins born at home in water and two days apart, and told us a few times in a tut tut kind of voice that we were very very lucky that it had worked out well for us.  He also told me that I was high risk anyway because of my age, and how many babies I’d had, and because I’d had a caesarean and twins most recent.  And then finished up by saying that I may as well stay in if I was already there, and spend the night even though there was no risk and we weren’t premature after all, and have an ultrasound in the morning so they could see what was going on.  Of course they wouldn’t be giving me any more pills to slow it down, or the other shot of steroids that was coming.   

He left the room and I wailed to Currawong about what an idiot I felt.  And then I rang Annetta.  “Get out of there!  And I’ll come visit you tonight, and we’ll see what we do from there” was her advice.  And big old strapping hippy me, the alternative lifestyler, the anarchist, the system questioning one……really needed somebody else to give me permission to go.  Afterall,  once I was booked in and had the tags on my wrists, wasn’t it a given?  And a really sad consideration that was probably one of the main reasons I was in hospital in the first place, and yet another casualty of the war between homebirth and hospital birth, was the knowledge that if something ‘bad’ happened in hospital, it would be considered par for the course, but if that same ‘bad’ thing happened at home, as the writer of a blog that was rather public about my impending birth, I’d most likely be hauled before the coroners court and demonised by the mainstream media and a horde of anti-homebirthing internet activists who’d doctor my photographs so I looked like Charles Manson……  What a shame politics has entered the arena of a woman’s personal choice for a place to birth.  So I needed permission.  All of a sudden this was a totally normal birth, and it was safe to do at home, and I could exercise my rights and just…..walk…..out…..of…….there……. 

The nice midwife came back in with a very unappetising hospital version of spaghetti bolognaise, and with tears in my eyes I told her that I wanted to be back with my family, to which I was overwhelmingly happy when she totally agreed, thought it would be best, and I’m sure she gave me a veiled message to stay the hell at home, when she told me about how I could come back in the morning, and sit around on my bum for another 8 hours till they could get around to giving me an ultrasound….or stay with my family and see how labour progressed at home.  She went and worked it out with the doctor, and before you could say ‘Homebirths-R-Us’ we were getting shooed out of the room, and I took those tags off my wrists, and we scampered out of the building to the big sky, and the fresh air, and our wonderful magic bus that was going to spirit us back home.  The feeling of reprieve from impending doom was immense.  The reminder of how unspecial a hospital environment can be, even when they’re doing you the tremendous favour of helping you or saving a life, was timely.  And maybe that doomsaying midwife friend hadn’t been right after all!!  Maybe we really could pull off another beautiful homebirth.  

And as a little aside and to skip to the present, it’s only a few weeks after our birth, and already the story has spread round the area like wildfire, and friends have already heard a few times how “That woman who has SO many children, didn’t even get her dates right!”  Reminds me of when I had an emergency caesarean with Balthazar, and “that woman who’d had all those natural births had to have a caesarean, so you never can tell!!”, and there were also some nastier comments about how the ‘mighty homebirther had fallen’.  And it sits in a funny place within me.  Like a slightly uncomfortable itch that intermittently annoys.  A bit of a wrinkle in my birthing fabric.  I also got my dates wrong with Spiral-Moon, because the first day of my last period wasn’t actually the first day of my last period…..it was a miscarriage of her twin.  And I only found out that I’d got my dates wrong because I was going to freebirth her in a town 250kms away from Adelaide, and thought I should at least make sure that the placenta was in a good place and everything was going well before we did.  And you know what?  Sometimes the medical system and ultrasounds get it wrong too.  I’ve got just about every detail possible ‘wrong’ throughout all my births, and hardly ever predicted correctly which gender they were going to be.  But what I’ve learnt from my  ‘mistakes’ could fill a book, and has taught me far more than being ‘right’ all the time could have.  And in getting so caught up in getting it ‘right’, we can get so swept up in using other peoples terms and talismans that we can miss the subtle little nuances that were meant just for us.  Like how in getting my birth dates ‘wrong’, we ended up in hospital for a day, and got to really live out some of my most dastardly fears about the birth I was about to engage in the Tango with, and to really sit with them, in the hospital, with all the staff around us, and then get the incredible opportunity to break free, fly the gilded cage, and empower ourselves towards the birth that we really wanted.  What an amazingly emphatic way of working through some last minute fears and creating some clearing around them so that the forthcoming journey was made all the sweeter and stronger!!

And (to get back to the story), the first thing we did was go shopping.  I was so unprepared for this birth, that I didn’t even have a pair of knickers!  Let alone something to bleed into, or soak up my excess breast milk, or baby clothing, or wrapping cloths, or a birthing pool…..  I was especially worried about the lack of birthing pool.  Annetta couldn’t get her hands on one at this short notice, and how could I birth out of water!  Surely there was a kids pool to be bought in the megaplex that would do? But they were all too shallow or too big, and I calmed myself with the knowledge that we had a bath at home that would probably do.  Getting back home again was like a homecoming scene from the Waltons……hugs and tears and many children draped all round me asking for the story, and telling us how glad they all were that we were both back.  We settled them all down, and got them into bed, our visitor and her girls went to bed also, and Currawong went to bed early too, after our exhausting and emotionally roller coasted day, while I sat up to wait for Annetta.

She drove up in her awesome 4WD home, and parked outside, walked into the front door, gave me a huge hug and kiss, and then scooped up a baby bat that was sitting in a corner between the bathroom and hallway doors.  “You’ve got a baby bat” she said as she held the little one up, and we looked for something to hold it in.  I brought out a basket that I’d made as a meeting between crochet and basket weaving, nice and wooly like a mamma bat, and we popped it in there, till I could pass it on to my big daughter and the other kids to look after later.  We both decided it was a good omen, bats being considered good luck by many peoples, and a baby bat to boot…..  And I told Annetta about how we were all sure that this baby coming was a girl, and how Currawong had liked the name Batsheva for years, with it’s meaning being ‘daughter of seven’ which we all thought was apt.  We chatted, I told her the story of the day, we had cuppa’s, and then she checked me over, felt the head that was down in my pelvis nicely, heard the baby’s heartbeat, and checked me on the inside to see how I was going.  The only danger now was one of infection, as the plug was gone, but if I kept clean, drank lots of water, and showered regularly, all that risk should be avoided.  Everything was tickety boo, I was so relieved and greatful to be home and out of the hospital, and we smilingly went off to bed, hoping that the next time we saw each other would be early in the morning while I was in labour, and could ring the hospital and cancel that ultrasound, as my baby had come and was safe at home.

3am in the morning I woke up and started having tightenings, sat up for a while on my own, and then Jess, my big daughter, woke up and joined me.  We had a lovely time out of time together, in the endless seeming hours of the early morning, as I told her stories about how horrendous I felt when I realised that I was 37 weeks pregnant in the hospital and thought I’d ripped us all off a homebirth, and how glad I was that we were home, and how strange it was to be birthing without my mother around for the first time, and how freaked out I was about birthing out of water……  A really bonding and connecting time.  She started timing the contractions, and they were very nicely and evenly heading down a narrowing tunnel of focus towards contractions close together and getting more intense.  In between them I kept chatting, and was getting more and more excited and empowered as I realised that I could manage my tightenings out of the water!  I was finding a position that tucked my bum in, while hanging my pelvis in as relaxed a manner as I could, rubbing the top of my bum, breathing out through a wide open mouth, and rubbing just under my belly all at the same time.  Currawong woke up feeling well rested, and joined in the dance I was creating through the house and the verandah, and we were both feeling happy and like we were going to meet our baby soon.  The contractions were getting closer and closer, and Jess went out to wake Annetta.  She came in too, and the dance kept winding round the house, and in between contractions I was brilliantly alive, and intense, and telling them the magic of this baby.  This new baby was all about letting go of the old and my attachments I decided.  I’d lost my birthing necklace with the Kali cow bone bead that I’d had since Griffyn’s birth, to Balthazar bashing it to smithereens early on in the pregnancy.  I’d left my breastfeeding dressing gown at my mum’s house.  I was birthing for the first time without my mother around, and interestingly, was out of the water and out of my traditional birthing position on my back, that was the same position that my mother had birthed me.  I’d been into the lion’s den of the hospital, thinking that my anxieties and that dire prediction had won, but had been released to birth at home, and was finally able to shrug off all those negative omens!!  I was standing on two feet strongly grounded, and looking birth in the eye!  I was wearing a lanolin soaked, handspun, bird cape with a raw fleece bustle that I’d made for Tribal Fibres, as a wrap to lend me power and magic.   I was meeting birth in a different way than I’d ever met it before, dressed in power clothes, standing tall and strong, perching my pelvis in a way that relieved the pain, and with my Currawong firmly at my side, instead of running around boiling water and making sure that the bath was the right temperature.  He was just as delighted with the new fangled way that this birth was happening.  I was grinning and smiling and laughing with delight at the fears I was facing, and the new birthing paths I was treading.  It looked like we were heading nicely towards birthing in time to ring the hospital with our awesome result, and then get on with the rest of the day…..

And then our guest woke up.  She had breakfast, and was telling stories of herself and her relationship and her births, and chatting to all my people who’d been dancing with me, and the contractions started to slow.  I tried to entice her into the birthing cocoon we’d been weaving, and she joined in the dance for a moment.  But then we were hearing about her plans for the day, and her daughters woke up, and my expansions virtually came to a stop.  I was bereft.  We were heading so cleanly and strongly towards birth weren’t we?  What had happened?  How could it have gone away so completely?  I came to the conclusion that I needed to ask our guest to leave.  I needed to reclaim my birth space, and keep it sacred and for the people who were in on the dance with me, and immediate family and my birth support person only.  Our guest didn’t take it too well, and felt like she was being kicked out, and was very pouty about it, but I stayed strong.  Which was actually a really big thing for me.  Underneath the strong alternative exterior, I’m actually quite a wus, and have often given what I want over in the face of opposition.  I’ll compromise what I want to make others happy before just sticking to what I want and exactly how I want it.  But I was clear.  “This isn’t about you, it’s about me, and what I need for this birth, and who I want around me, and it has to be family only.  Bummer about the timing, and thank you for your help yesterday, but that’s just how it is.”   I organised with a dear friend closer to Nimbin for our guest and her girls to stay in their community house for a few nights, and after packing up she was gone.  And so was my birthing process that had felt like it was coming to a conclusion.

We sat around for a bit, I had a few spasmodic contractions, and tried hard to not feel like I’d failed in some way.  Annetta decided to head off for the day, advised me to rest, and said she’d be back later that night after the babies were asleep, and we’d see what happened then.  We all agreed that we’d give it till the next morning, and if nothing was happening then, we’d have to consider hospital again.  That day was a bit despondent.  I tried all the things that I knew could bring on labour….walking around, squatting, and other positions to give my body every chance to kick back into the birthing process.  The hospital rang to see how we were going, and Currawong told them that birth had been happening and then stalled, and we were waiting to see what the rest of the day brought, and if nothing had happened by the next morning we’d be considering coming back in.  But the highlight of the day was Currawong’s favourite birth starting procedure…..making love.  And this was the first time in our birthing career that it actually worked.  All the other times we’ve tried it have been with lots of people around, and as a purely mechanical antidote.  Currawong’s enjoyed it, but I’ve been unimpressed, unfocused, and interested in what it might do for my body only.  But there was no-one around, the kids were all off on a walk, there was nothing else happening, and our lovemaking session did kick off a few contractions, but that was not the main aim of the exercise anymore.  We actually had the time and space to melt into each other, and visited the special place we create together, with the added spice of immanent birth.  I climaxed quite a few times, and Currawong was crying as our bubble of us drew to a close, telling me that watching me love him was what he was born for.  That moment he was watching me, was the moment he was born to witness.  Gotta love a romantic bird man.

Birth meanwhile, had gone on a very extended coffee break, and wasn’t coming back into the space anytime soon.  The day dwindled into the night, and well fed kids went off to bed, and Currawong again went to bed early with them.  I sat alone and waited for Annetta again, sad, and depressed, and tired after two days now of little sleep and big stress.  She came in again like a breeze of hope, and just hugged me and let me hold onto her.  And then she checked me over again, checked the baby’s heartbeat and position, and we sat as she explained what she was piecing together.  After having so many baby’s, my uterus was looser than normal, and hadn’t quite contracted tight enough to start pushing out a baby.   My body had been taken by surprise by the plugs defection, and a bit like my birth preparations, just wasn’t quite ready.  There was nothing wrong with the baby either, and it seemed like the little person inside had been caught on the hop as well, not quite ready to shimmy down my birth canal.  The culprit it seemed was the fact that my cervix which, again after having had so many baby’s, had been dilated and open for quite a while beforehand, and had left the plug vulnerable and exposed to the hungry bacteria that live in every healthy vagina, which had snacked on the sweetness of my mucus plug.  And then stresses, and moving, and cleaning and the like had helped weaken it, till it came away earlier than my body and baby were ready for.  So there was nothing wrong with us, except a mechanical fault that had thrown a spanner in the works…..so to speak.  And we seriously spoke about how getting this far from the plug having come away, there was still an increased risk of infection to me and the babe inside, and I had to finally and completely let go of the idea of a water birth, as water increased the risk of infection too.  I went to bed despondent and tired, but I felt like I at least had a clearer picture about why this was happening, and that there was nothing wrong with my body or baby. 

And guess what……..I’ve reached my self imposed limit for a blog post, so I’m going to finish the story in another post.  We have another situation of a ‘to be continued’.  It may not be twins, but it goes over days again, and a lot can happen in three and a bit days!!  And sorry, but this birth was far too engaging and intimate for any of us to have bothered with taking many photo’s, so you’ll have to imagine how it looked in your minds eye………….

Trust birth? Well mostly..........

A little while ago on Facebook, when I was talking about the search for a home, a midwife, and a doula, a woman asked me why I wasn’t considering freebirthing.  As she pointed out, I’ve got more experience in birthing than a lot of other folks around, and have thought very deeply about it all, so why do I feel the need to have a midwife?  The question really sat with me, and I wondered why myself.  I’ve always had a tremendous respect for women and families that freebirth, and for the last 4 births Currawong and I have tossed around the possibility of freebirthing……..but it never really materialised into a realistic proposition for me.  But I’m really glad the question was asked, as ever since it’s been sitting at the back of my brain pan, tumbling around with all my other thoughts, and it’s been an interesting journey following all the threads that come from it. 

In my toolkit of experiences, I’ve had a few run in’s with homebirthing midwives that were less than empowering, and a few with doctors and hospitals as well.  I’ve read books from the Christian fundamentalist right wing about unassisted birth, and how midwives, doctors and all other birth workers just get in the way of what should naturally be a magical experience shared by the mum and dad alone.  And I really related to what was written.  When the books drew attention to the observation that many women focused their oxytocic love, thanks and bonding on the midwife, rather than their mate, I could really see what they were talking about.  There’s so many birth stories I’ve read, where women talk in loving and glowing terms about their midwives, and all their other family members kinda take a back seat to the show.  And there’s a lot of intervention that some midwives get into that is totally unnecessary and just gets in the way, like giving internals, and cutting cords quickly, and catching the baby and ‘giving’ it to the mamma.  And after having a less than positive experience with homebirthing midwives, I really got into this way of looking at midwife led births for a while…….only to get pregnant again, cleanse a lot of my negative juju about midwives by meeting one who listened to me rant and agreed with me, and then was present at our birth in the most unobtrusive way possible, and gave me the gift of ‘catching’ my own baby.  I then went on to become a bit of a homebirthing and midwife advocate, till Balthazar came a long and introduced me to the blessings of western medicine.  And of course in my most recent and publicised birth of twins, Lisa was an integral, necessary, and much loved part of the process, and I definitely had a lot to say about her in my writings.

And while I know the statistics of caesareans in hospitals is incredibly alarming, and I get the whole interventionist dance that often leads to caesareans, as well as the scare mongering that happens from doctor folks when homebirth or natural birth is suggested…..I’ve had some really empowering, respectful, and peaceful births in hospitals too.  My main beef with hospitals has been their overwhelming attitude that birth is fraught with danger, and that birth belongs in the same corridors as deathly illnesses, physical trauma, great sickness and slow death.  I’ve got a bit of a problem too, with how the trend in hospitals at the moment is to separate mamma’s and babies, and that whole invasive separation they do with cleaning, testing, jabbing needles etc.  Kinda doesn’t really aid in a gentle welcome, compassion for a little being who’s been living in a controlled, peaceful and watery womb, and bonding.  Also, how it’s really hard to feel safe and cave like, and tap into a woman’s mammalian brain, in the sterile and bright environment of a hospital ward.   But then again, if a woman is really afraid of birth and what might happen, maybe for her a hospital is the safe place that she needs to be able to fully relax into the birthing process?  Afterall, even though much ado is made of interventionist practices in hospital, there are still a huge amount of women who birth naturally and without drugs in them.

To be brutally honest, I don’t think either camp has all the answers, or even all the questions, and I think that both homebirthing midwives and their supporters, and hospital birth workers and their supporters are two halves of the same whole.  Very antagonistic and despising of each other halves, but halves nonetheless.  And while they’re stuck in this anti each other and polarising dance for the soul of birth, a lot of women, children, families and individuals on both sides of the track are being overlooked, seriously neglected, and damaged in the process.  On the one side we have the birth trusting, all women have been beautifully designed to birth naturally, and by the way we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, so hospitals and doctors should just get back in their boxes, and take their hands off birth, and leave us all to do it peacefully at home approach, that also makes a fair deal about the scaremongering of doctors and obstetricians, and how a lot of their ‘facts’ are lies.  And then on the other side we have the medical approach that points to the harm that can come to unprepared women and families facing an emergency situation at home, and perhaps a long way from a hospital, as well as some of the dangers that can be faced when there’s an un-regulated body of birth workers attending births at home.  There’s also the body of information they hold about the dangers of birth, and how fraught birth HAS been in our history.  Yes many women pushed out babes on the fields and kept going, but a lot of them experienced babies getting stuck, and dying, and cords around necks stopping them from being born, and a hundred other possibilities that can and do happen even in these days of improved diet and hygiene and birth trusting.  But unfortunately, it’s the mainstream medical model that has the weight of the government and legal practitioners behind them, willing to send the horses of the apocalypse after homebirthers, and resulting in an unfairly balanced war effort on behalf of the hospital birthing scene.    

And the result of this antagonistic polarising dance in my opinion anyway, is causing many a casualty in the self esteem and bonding of families and birthing women across the board.  Unsuprisingly, with the amount of kids bounding around us every time we’re in public, a lot of my conversations with people we come across revolve around birth and kids.  And I’m really saddened that a lot of women respond to my stories with half ashamed accounts of how they weren’t brave enough to try birthing at home, or they tried and just couldn’t cut it, or they used every drug they possibly could because they were so afraid, or they didn’t have any option because their pelvis was too small, or they had health complications, or they had a natural birth and it traumatised them, or they suffered post natal depression, or a million other reasons why they didn’t give birth in either the wholistic, alternative accepted manner, or the hospital, mainstream accepted manner.  And these women all take it onto themselves, as their own fault, as their own body failing them in birth, as their inability to birth ‘properly’ being all their own doing, as an experience that happened to them that was less than they hoped, the result of which, can put some serious bricks in the wall of their lack of self esteem and body confidence, which then leeches from their parenting confidence, and sense of connection with their families, and becomes part of the general body of stories around birth that go unacknowledged from either side of the polarised fence, as it doesn’t fit appropriately into their accepted picture of what birth is.

I see so many women and families in pain around their birthing experiences, that I’ve taken to saying something like this to them….. 

“Ya know what darlin?  There is no ‘perfect’ birth, birth just is what it is.  Every one is different, and every birth is perfect if you let it be, no matter whether it was at home or in the hospital.  And we haven’t been designed perfectly to give birth, cause we CHANGED OUR DESIGN!!  When we decided to grow our frontal lobes and walk upright we changed our design from the less problematic mammalian birth canals that were straight, and we turned them into this twisty birth canal that can really cause problems.    And babies had to be born a year premature, which meant they couldn’t walk like all the other mammal babies, so mother nature had to create a tricksy system of oxytocic rewards if we held them to us and fed them when they were hungry, so they weren’t eaten by dogs or stolen by other tribes.  You just need to be true to yourself and do what feels good for you, cause that’s all that counts really.  Trying to birth or parent in any kind of way because that’s what you’ve been told is ‘right’ is never gonna work, cause it doesn’t carry the weight of your belief and life experience.  Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, and listen to yourself and your new baby whose instincts haven’t been convinced otherwise yet, and all will be fine…”

Or something like that anyway. 

Cause the biggest casualty in the war over birth is birth itself.  And it is a war, and quite a vicious one at times.  Nastiness and personal attacks are hurled by both sides, personalities especially associated with either camp singled out for horrific attention, and it seems that no-one’s getting the law of attraction proven by quantum physics, that you get more of what you focus on!  And my own personal experience that you become what you hate is also coming into this equation.  No one is winning anything, except for long drawn out battle plans being enacted, and a lot of energy being spent on the fight.  And a whole lot of people are losing, their integrity, their passions, their experiences being validated, and their sense of self worth.  Sometimes it seems to me that the fight just takes up too much space.

In an ideal world, both halves of birth would come together and hold hands instead.  Doctors and obstetricians would study their own sciences, especially that of Ethnopaediatrics and the beautiful works of Dr Sarah Buckley, Leboyer, Michel Odent, and all the others who’ve championed gentle and welcoming births, and provide birthing centres all over the world that allowed lesser and greater influences of homebirth and hospital birth depending on the blend required by the families that use them.  And homebirthing midwives who feel drawn to the trade, will work co-operatively with them in partnership and backup, so that all the potentialities of birth can be dealt with effectively and cohesively.  And the women and families entering the mysterious world of birth will have equal access to all the different perspectives and possibilities available, and have free access to whatever option works for them, based on their life experience and deeply held beliefs.  And imagine what we could do with all the energy focused on this war if the war dissolved!!  If the polarity that exists melted into a whole, there would be no ‘taboo’ subjects left anymore, so women walking into birth for the first time could explore the possibilities of natural caesareans for example, and alternative forms of pain relief, and maybe, just maybe, we could also focus our attention on what happens AFTER birth, a largely ignored realm in many birthing circles.  We focus on the conception, the pregnancy, the hormones, the birth and all it’s possibilities, but what happens after?  What about the importance of bonding?  The exhaustion many women feel after entertaining family hours after birthing? How to fold cloth nappies?  How to deal with sibling rivalry?  How to deal with the issues of step parenting?  How to address problems that occurred during the birth and set up patterns that aren’t life enhancing?  How to ‘unlearn’ survival skills that we’ve been taught by our parents that don’t help us survive, and in fact may be really stuffing us up?  I can think of worlds that we could be spending our collective energy on that would be far more rewarding than the argy bargy between hospital and home birthing.

So to get back to the original question, I guess that on deep contemplation, I’d have to say that I trust birth implicitly metaphysically, but not completely physically.  I’m aware of the things that can go wrong, and that HAVE gone sideways for me in my experiences, and when I’m in that intensely vulnerable and ‘elsewhere’ state of engaging in the age old dance of birth, I really like someone around to hold my hand, and who I know will cover my back.  Someone who isn’t Currawong and my family, who are caught up with their own experience, but who is there to just focus on me and the baby inside me coming out safely.  Someone who knows enough about the intricacies of birth to be able to fix any solvable problems at home, and also to get us the hell out of there and to a hospital on time if that’s what is needed.  And I’m so greatful for the folk that spend years in university learning how to help me and others when we really need them in hospitals, as well as the midwives who dig into the past to find old ways of birthing, as well as making alternative information available as well.  I’m greatful for all birthworkers really, and see the value in all their work and ideas.  I just wish it was something that they and others could see mutually and in themselves as well.

But that’s just my perception of birth, and the best way to do it, and when it comes down to it, I’d argue for anyone else’s perceptions till I’m blue in the face, cause that’s what it’s all about to me.  The combination of all our experiences and perceptions are equally valid and enhancing if taken that way, to the whole.  And if we put em all together and respect them all, we have a really healthy blueprint for the evolution of us all and our consciousness so we can USE those frontal lobes we traded easier births for, to help our planet and ourselves move beyond this warring and fighting over who’s right and wrong that happens in every sector, and move into an evolution of love, respect, peace and freedom for every single thing in the universe.  I’ll keep dreaming it up………

Unschooling for everyone....

Having some amazing unschooling moments recently....now I've got over myself as being the 'teacher', I'm learning as much as they are about the things their interests are leading us all too! Balthazar using his potty for the first time becomes learning about positive reinforcement, reading a kids book about a snow plough turns into a discussion about lighting the methane gas in the permafrost in Siberia.....and walking on the beach becomes a physical demonstration of the weather patterns in a mountain range in Argentina. They're comparing what they see in documentaries with what they see around them all the time, comparing the liquid of air to the liquid of water, to the liquid that moves really slowly of the earth....

They play and make things everywhere they go, and create fun wherever they are.

No props needed, no text books or tests, just life experiences and comparisons and input.    A day spent trying to work out drainage on the driveway, become a huge example of how the two rivers of the Amazon come together and blend their different colours.

Having a big argument turns into a conversation about what we can make from the things we find in a small radius on the ground, which becomes building a village – the process of which was incredible. First Lilly made a garden with a bark fence, dug up soil, and leaves stuck in, and all roads radiated out from that, then Spiral made the pit for the pit toilets and put in the water tank, which was an upside down pot, then we all made houses and dwellings from bark and sticks, and Griff made a dwelling for the elders out of stone, then we all moved on to the hole in the ground under the grass tree that we decided was the hole of the bunyip, so Griff made a sign that said 'Alfie the bunyip lives here, please respect', and we dug a swimming hole with a bark bridge over it. Currawong came along and made a mountain out of leaves and bark, more roads were put in to get to it all, and Griff designed a dwelling that led to some serious discussions on the community about potential building concepts, which pleased him no end.

And we're starting to record our stories and what we're learning in a big black book, and the kids are right on the money with making it real and factual and truthful, remembering details that might have eluded me.  We've had a tremendous and huge amount of joy visiting the Botanic Gardens in Adelaide, spending whole days observing and experiencing the park in parts.  One day was spent smelling all the roses, and oohing and aahhing about the colours.  And another was spent in the Cactus Garden.

And they've also been learning a lot about animals, and in particular chickens.  They've taught themselves how to pick them up, and encourage them to sit on shoulders, and find every thing about them a complete delight.

And sometimes all they need is some clay or mud, and they can make a game out of that too.

When I leave them alone to learn, I'm astonished about how their minds work in so many fresh ways. How their lateral thinking seems to have no bounds, and their creative solutions to everything they come across is endlessly amazing. How everything they see triggers memories of similar things they've seen before. I know I keep labouring that point, but it's really struck me that all the very best things I've learnt for myself in my life have been learnt from a combination of life experience and comparison. We read our kids stacks of books, but there is a huge difference between the attention they give books, and the attention they give us when we're telling them something 'real', or a story from our lives that applies to what's happening at the moment. Being left to their own initiation, I'm amazed at how purposeful and driven they are to create and learn! Self motivation is a wonderful thing to observe....

And it strikes me that it really is unschooling....not so much for them as for US! Learning to let go of what other people think, the ways that we've been taught to learn, thinking that we're more knowledgeable, or should be in a heirarchical position and 'teach' them. Thinking they have to have 'outcomes' or ways to prove to other people their intelligence, which is what they do naturally in every conversation they have. And the big one of course, letting go of needing to run with the pack of mainstream culture, and really taking pride and delight in our path less travelled and what it teaches us all on a daily basis...